Bring Me a Dream
by InsertImaginativeNameHere
Summary: For the past three nights, Zed has been dreaming of the return of something ancient, visions of a man in a long black robe, escaping from a glass prison. Of course, as John says, there's no such thing as the Sandman, right? (based on the 3rd Sandman story 'Dream a Little Dream of Me', reworked for the TV show's canon. Credit to Neil Gaiman for plot and some of the dialogue)


**A/N: Thanks to Dannylionthe1st for beta-ing this story. The assistance was much appreciated, as was the input on the title.**

Lately, Zed's dreams were full of darkness. There were the obvious candidates, that being the Rising Darkness, of course, but sometimes there were others, fleeting visions, equal in the length of their shadows. She had learnt to hazard a guess between the two, with varying success. The latest, she knew, fell into the second category.

For three nights in a row, she had awoken with a start, breathing heavily and feeling uncertain, unidentifiable dread. It was then, as she slowed down, that the dream would come into her head. A pale, bone-white figure, sat naked in a round snow globe-like prison, waiting. There would be a hesitation, then vast swathes of nothingness spread over her vision. Silence. Rustling, then, in the infinite black, a sinister stirring, movement. More silence. Then, in swift sudden motions, the person or entity would come into clear view, dark robes, dark hair in a wild bird's nest sticking out at all angles. Flames licked the bottom of his robe.

"He is coming back," an echoing voice would intone. "The Sandman will be free. By the time three sunrises have passed, the Lord of Dreams will have escaped his glass prison and returned to his realm."

With that, she would wake, trembling and frantic. She could not remember the dream, not at first. And then, every time, without fail, it would dawn on her, in increasing increments of horror.

Three sunrises had come and gone before she decided to mention it to John. She probably wouldn't have; he was busy dealing with a case of mysterious vivisections upstate, and had arrived back late the previous evening in one of his moods, cynical and world-weary, insistent on downing glass after glass until he passed out. Chas had said not to ask.

The final time she had the dream, in those breathless seconds before awakening, the figure, the _Sandman_ , if that was who this was, looked up and she saw piercing lights inside his shadowed eyes. He put an almost skeletal finger to his narrow lips in a hushing gesture, and Zed, fighting to get away, to wake up, pulled herself into consciousness, sweating and shaking. That was when she knew John needed to know, and she got dressed to go find him, only to see he'd fallen asleep on the sofa, at last, and God knew he needed that rest. Chas was gone, home to Renee and Geraldine. The only person she could consult - well, not so much a person as 'celestial manifestation' but…

"Manny?" she whispered, as soon as she was out of earshot of the sleeping idiot downstairs, putting her hands together in respectful prayer. "I'm sorry to ask, but I don't want to wake John. If you are able to - please, if you can hear-"

"Well, I'll say this again, you are infinitely more polite than our friend in there." Zed turned and saw the angel standing smiling behind her. Involuntarily, she smiled too. Manny had that effect. He was a lot friendlier than John had made him out to be. Mind you, John was always spoiling for a fight when there was none. "What was it you wanted to ask?"

"I've been having this dream, the past three nights," Zed began. "A pale man, in black, stars for eyes. There was this...voice. It said the Sandman was coming back. Is there such thing?"

Manny went quiet "The Lord Morpheus is returning?" he managed, eventually. "After all this time?"

"Is that good or bad?"

The angel shrugged. "It can only be good for the Dreaming; since he went missing seventy-five years ago his realm, unconsciousness, _unreality itself_ , has been in disarray. He is one of a set, seven ancient beings, billions of years old, called the Endless. Perhaps of all his siblings, he is bound by the Rules most heavily, which is why his absence came as such a surprise. If he were to re-enter the equation...well, that could be interesting indeed, especially with the Rising Darkness. He will not involve himself openly, but if any creatures are using his disappearance to their own ends, if they try to take him on…" Manny chuckled. "I really, really hope he has his objects at hand, they will be useful."

"Objects?"

"Fragments of himself, stores of energy. A helmet, a ruby, a pouch of sand. He is the Sandman, after all. With those objects, he is at the height of his power."

Zed nodded, taking it all in. "What else can you tell me about him? You called him - Morpheus?"

"He accumulates names to himself. Some call him the Prince of Stories. Others something else. He almost collects titles. Zed, if the Lord of Dreams is back, which seems likely. Your visions may change completely. You may experience unusual phenomena, I honestly have no idea how it will affect you. Be careful, Zed."

A rush of wings, and she was alone. Taking up pencil and paper, she began to draw her vision, starting with those lethal cheekbones…

‡

For the past eighteen months now, John had been waking up from nightmares of Newcastle, punctuated with occasional interludes of Hell, Gary Lester, troubled childhood memories, and all his surprisingly-still-living friends dying horribly in bloody, searing agony. Mostly though, it was Newcastle, and today was no exception. He woke up, breath caught in his throat, he rolled off the sofa into a heap on the floor, muttering and swearing and _cursing_ , hangover pounding in his temples. What was worse: the horrors he saw when he closed his eyes, or the very real chaos of his actual life? There was something almost preferable about repeating Newcastle over and over, something more deserving - _sodding karma innit? -_ than facing the responsibilities that came of being the designated driver during the sort-of end of days.

Every time he would wake up, relieved to have escaped his own head, and then it would hit him, the realisation that yeah the Rising Darkness was coming. He'd remember how shit his life was, what he had to do, and exhaustion would just flood him. How could he, John Constantine, possibly - _no_ , he _could_. There had to be a way. There always was. It was just he was tired of getting up every day (or not) to this, tired of the weight that came with being him. When he'd first started magic, he was doing it for fun. What a fucking joke. Now he _needed_ to, couldn't go on without it, an addiction worse than Gaz's heroin. God knew he'd tried, back there in Ravenscar. He'd tried. Problem was, he was - on occasion - bloody good at it, it came as easily as breathing. Instinctive. Which was all well and good, except he didn't want to be responsible for the fate of humanity. What had humanity ever done for him? He wanted to go back to how it used to be.

He wanted it to be _fun_ again.

It was a catch-22 situation: you sleep, you suffer a torture of your own making; you get up...and the whole world falls apart around you. Lose-lose.

But he had to get up, that was the thing, he always had to. One day it'd calm down and he could relax again, if he still knew how to do that. He could face himself in the mirror. He could enjoy the weirdness of the world without it affecting him anymore. He'd be the cool, smooth, arrogant bastard he used to be before everything went to shit. And he was already getting better, to be fair to him. The Rising Darkness just had to ruin all that, didn't it? Hauling himself onto unsteady feet, he teetered toward the kitchen.

Part of him really wanted to grab the nearest bottle and wash away the memories of their recent case with a liquid breakfast, but the self-aware, bitter part of himself that kept him going recoiled in disgust. What kind of scum was he? How appalling could he be?

Slowly, gradually, he started to pull himself together into the nearest semblance of an actual, real person that he could muster up. He ate; leftover pizza from the other day or whatever, but it was still food, right? He changed clothes, picking out an identical white shirt, an identical pair of black trousers, opting for the red tie today. He shaved, cleaned himself up; he could not be doing with Chas blagging on about all that bollocks when he got back. There. He looked for all the world like anyone else, a normal person, he looked like he was _coping_. What did the world know? The world couldn't even fight its own battles against the demons spewing forth from hell. No, that was his function, and on a good day, he was actually passably decent at it, nay bloody brilliant. Give or take the occasional blip (i.e., Newcastle).

After he sorted himself out, lit the first cigarette of the day, he decided to check in on Zed, see how she was doing. He did, actually, have some affection for her, despite his better judgement. There was always the worry she wouldn't come back one day, she'd leave with Jim Corrigan, only for Jimmy-boy to promptly die on her as per prophecy, or the more pressing concerns for her physical well-being (aka survival).

"Zed? You up?" Daft question. Knowing himself, he'd slept in until late afternoon, early evening. Still. Polite to ask, wasn't it?

"Over here," the psychic replied from upstairs, sat on the balcony sketching. She'd be no good for conversation for at least an hour, then, when he could take a peek at her drawing and assess the threat level. Zed was drawing, er- _fucking-_ go she'd had a vision. Meaning they were, basically, fucked. Again. So soon after the vivisections as well. Nasty business, best to forget about it. If Chas could sleep easy again after what that Edward Scissorhands copycat did to him, he'd be lying.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something," Zed set aside her art book. "The Sandman."

Initially, he was taken aback, but as soon as he'd processed the initial shock he managed to laugh, a mocking chuckle. "There's no such thing, luv. Nothin' more'n a bedtime story. Trust me. If the Sandman was real, I'd know about it, and I'd've punched the bastard one by now."

Zed rolled her eyes "Manny says he's real."

Of course he did. Bloody typical. "Oh, we're organisin' little get togethers with Manny now, are we, havin' a good old chinwag?" John couldn't help but be snide about it. "You can tell that feathery tosser where to shove his opinion, next time he feels like having one about something he knows sod all about. Do angels dream? No."

"You're just annoyed you might be wrong about something," Zed pointed out. She was right, as bloody always. Annoying thing about psychics, that was, even ones like Zed. She was right. He hated it when Manny had the jump on him, and he hated it when he knew nothing about what he was up against - his childhood was not one filled with an overabundance of bedtime stories. And then, if there was a Sandman, if he'd stuck John on a loop of Newcastle for this long _by design_...that was just the last straw, wasn't it?

"Trust me, luv, I'm wrong about lots of things but not this one," he insisted, out of his own pride more than anything else. "Out of interest, what exactly did Manny say?"

Zed smiled, shaking her head hopelessly, motioning for John to come upstairs. He did, sitting down next to the psychic. She closed her sketchbook and turned to him. "Not much. Just that the Sandman - Lord Morpheus - was one of something called 'the Endless', one of seven." Morpheus, God of Dreams. Also that dick from the Matrix, Laurence Fishburne with shades. Endless? Sounded vaguely familiar, actually, anthropomorphic personifications, weren't they? "And that he'd been missing for seventy-five years."

Well. That explained why he'd never encountered this 'lord', this Sandman, never heard of him as anything other than a myth. What John wanted to know was why this was suddenly relevant now? Why had Manny been here? What was Zed drawing? Just as he started to wonder, she reopened the book and showed him a series of eerie, unnerving pencil-drawings of a man in serious need of a haircut, dressed in flowing black robes in some of the sketches, others were only portraits of a severe-looking face. One of them fitted into neither category. Zed had started to go over it in ink, making it all the more _odd_ and off-kilter. A gaunt man in a glass bubble, staring out with stars in his hollow eyes. John's heart sank, fear stirring in him; he pushed it back, closing the notebook and mustering up a cocky smile.

"You've been having visions?" he asked.

Zed nodded. "Three days in a row. I heard a voice. It said the Sandman was coming back. That he would be free from this soon-" she indicated the snowglobe he was stuck in. "Today, actually," she added sheepishly. "He's due today."

"Nice to see you got a schedule," John remarked sarcastically. "Not every day that happens." Not every day the Lord of Dreams escaped from a fishbowl for that matter, but still, Zed's visions were by nature imprecise. This was something new. John wasn't sure what was going on, but he probably blamed the Rising Darkness by default.

"What do you think it means?" the psychic asked. She presumed he _must_ know something, cared what he thought despite witnessing his failings. That'd get her killed one day.

He shrugged. "Hope I'm wrong, but gut instinct tells me we're going to be meeting the old git sooner or later." A knock at the door. Both of them jumped, then John smirked. "Come on, 's not like he'd be the type to knock, is it? Probably Chas forgot his keys, like." He sounded more certain than he felt. It was a gift. If he sounded convincing enough, he might even believe it himself.

Moving to the door as casually, calmly as possible, he rested his hand on the handle, looked to Zed and grinned wickedly, before flinging the door wide open.

He was halfway through his hasty greeting when he realised he was wrong. It wasn't Chas.

And the Sandman did knock after all. Now that was a turn-up.

"John Constantine, I presume," the tall, pale, lost lead singer of a gothic rock band-esque figure said, in a rich, echoing, very un-Laurence Fishburne tone (another major difference being this bloke was white. As in paper white. Literally).

A moment of silence, during which John could think only one thing: _Shit._

‡

As soon as John opened the door, the very air in the room altered under the very tangible presence that followed the Lord of Dreams, literally sending Zed's blood cold. She shivered involuntarily. Meanwhile, John's face was a picture and she realised with a sinking feeling he looked afraid. Then he seemed to shake it off and turned to Zed, taking a drag from his cigarette and saying;

"Congrats luv, you really nailed the whole 'creepy fuck' look he has going on, well done."

The unamused entity behind him remained entirely expressionless as he entered the room, his unreadable eyes scanning over her without pause. Slowly the Sandman - Lord Morpheus - entered and Zed looked down at her drawing to compare, proudly noting how well she had handled those impossibly sharp cheekbones. She noticed something there hadn't been time to see in her visions; the flames at the bottom of the robe were full of faces, which moved subtly to the flickering firelight. Standing up out of instinctive respect and awe, Zed wondered whether she ought to bow. Morpheus inclined his head.

"Who is your companion?" he asked in that beautiful, resonant voice.

"I'm Zed," she replied, before even John could respond. "It's an honour. I had visions about you."

The Lord of Dreams opened his mouth to speak when John cut in. "That's lovely an' all, but what do you want?"

"Something of mine came into your possession. A leather pouch, full of sand. I want it back. Where is it?"

"The objects!" Realisation dawned on Zed suddenly. Lord Morpheus turned to regard her coldly and she shifted uneasily. "Manny...he's this angel, he told me about you. He mentioned the three objects, stores of power." It was odd; Manny was an angel, speaking to him it was sometimes easy to forget until you met those bright yellow eyes, yet he came across as so very ordinary, mundane, and worlds more human than the tall, glacial _person_ (if that term could be applied) who loomed near the entrance, casting long shadows over the entire room, somehow. Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe it just seemed that way. Zed wasn't sure.

"One Ring to Rule them All," John muttered sarcastically, interrupting Zed's thoughts.

"John, this is serious!" she hissed. "Manny said that if Morpheus had the objects then he would be at the height of his power! The things that are using his Realm through the Rising Darkness will be facing a serious threat."

"The Rising Darkness?" the Lord of Dreams queried, narrowing his eyebrows in sheer bafflement.

"Oh yeah, Hell on Earth, mate, Hell on Earth." John smiled mockingly. "You might've missed that when you were off on your jolly hols." Morpheus fixed John with an icy glare and even the loudmouth exorcist decided it was time to behave himself. "Yeah, _that_ pouch. Years ago, now. I bought it in a garage sale in San Francisco. Knew it was powerful, but I never managed to get the drawstrings open."

"Where is it now?" the personification of dreams asked in level, carefully measured tones, his eyebrows somehow narrowing further.

John shrugged "Probably in this lock-up Chas has with all old stuff from before Jasper died and left us the millhouse. We moved the useful shit here not long back, left the pouch there with the rest of the old junk, no offence mate." Only John Constantine would dare call the _Lord of Dreams, seriously John what goes on in your head,_ 'mate'. "Didn't have any real purpose at the time, in hindsight it probably would've been a good idea to keep it nearby, but I wasn't to know, was I?"

A further twitching of those dark brows, that inscrutable face altering, not quite angry but...Zed couldn't name or so much as identify the emotion, it was too distant, too complex, entirely inhuman yet irreconcilably so. If she had to pin a label on it, she would say it was 'done', a particular, distinct kind of frustration Chas had mastered so admirably. This face here was thousands of years older, millions and billions so, but the essence was the same - Morpheus, God of Sleep and Prince of Stories, was _irritated_ with John Constantine. There was something almost amusing about it.

"Let us retrieve it then," Dream said, a little irritation creeping into his otherwise beautiful voice. It wasn't as though he said it through gritted teeth or anything, but you could sense how annoyed he was with the entire situation. Zed couldn't blame him. He'd escaped from imprisonment, imprisonment that had lasted _75 years_ , he'd waited for his chance, his jailors had no doubt grown old and died in this time...he'd broken free, and was seeking the tools of his trade, parts of his _soul_ , trying his hardest to reclaim his kingdom and restore his influence, and he had to put up with John's sniping and snarking and generally being a dick. He had no choice but to put up with it. He was, Zed realised, not just annoyed, but a little frightened too, at how the world had moved on without him. She couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

John shot Zed a look and, sighing, she reached for her keys and they went to the car.

‡

Honestly, this was _not_ a good day. So they had a literal personification of dreams hunched over, squashed into Zed's car, they were being forced to help him with his personal problems, driving a long way, and to top it all off the sodding radio had broken. It would _not_ stop playing ironic music on pain of death. John could have sworn he'd heard 'Mister Sandman' at least five times already. The final straw was 'In Dreams', with its so-called 'candy-coloured clown' - _yeah right. You can really tell Orbison never met the guy._ Meanwhile, the rather more monochromatic completely deadpan entity, was listening to all this with a completely straight face, staring straight ahead at the road with those piercing eyes, intent and focused on the task at hand. If he wasn't so blatantly terrifying, John would want to rouse him from his reverie but - _fuck no, no seriously, FUCK NO._

Zed was taking it all in her stride. He couldn't decide if that was good or bad; if he should be annoyed at her for handling it better than him, or pleased she was dealing with it so well. But then that was Zed for you. Too bloody good. Too bloody good for _him_ anyway.

A turn, left, then they pulled up outside the storage locker. John took the key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, bringing them into a complete and total darkness, boxes containing all of his old possessions in heaps and piles. There was a lot; this locker contained an entire life, a record of his existence, a history he preferred not to remember. There was Membrane stuff, an embarrassing music video he really didn't want Zed finding, an old, tuneless guitar, boxes of photographs, one or two even dating back to childhood, his sister, one photo of a woman he'd never known, a stranger he owed his entire existence to and was blamed for ending. His mother. And more mundane things: furniture, books, filing cabinets full of nonsense and bits of random paper. Amongst all this, he had left the Sandman's magical mystery bag of legendary sand. Somewhere. It was, admittedly, a while ago, he couldn't be expected to remember the _exact_ location. Somewhere in amidst all these chaotic memories, the things he didn't want Zed to see.

"Wait in the car, luv," he insisted, thinking of an excuse. "We may have to leave in a hurry, keep an eye out for anyone who seems distinctly Brujeria-ish, 'kay?"

Zed rolled her eyes. "Sure, John. I'll hit the horn if we get attacked by an evil Central American magic circle controlling the Rising Darkness. Anyone else I should look out for?"

"I dunno, maaaaybe those weird cult fuckers you used to hang out with? Papa Midnite, even? Another of his zombies?"

"I didn't hang out with them, John, they were keeping me prisoner," Zed hissed. "There's a difference."

"You ever going to explain why?"

Zed pulled a face and shrugged. "No," she said blandly, shaking her head. "Unless I have an actual reason. You two have fun." She smiled in a distinctly passive-aggressive way, and went back to the car. John looked at the aloof face of the Dream Lord and tried not to make a sarcastic remark about sticks and arses, namely that said entity had one up his...anyway, _fun_ probably wasn't possible for anyone within a ten mile radius of this tosser. Only Zed was immune, which was annoying as fuck. She only did it to annoy him, John was certain.

Fun.

Cut to two hours later, after searching through literally every piece of useless shit in the lock-up, including down the side-arm of a small (and stolen) sofabed, and still nothing, John was almost praying for a demonic attack to liven things up - and of course, it was him doing the searching, while his Lordship looked around in a sort of vague, half-arsed attempt at looking. Maybe because it was part of his soul, he could sense it. Or sense its absence.

As John thought that, the low voice of Dream echoed his thoughts. "It is not here, John Constantine. If it were here, I would be able to feel it."

John cracked a grin "Still got a load of stuff to go through yet, _boss_ ," he tried to stop himself sounding overly taunting, but it was difficult since it was so, so easy. "Keep smiling, it'll turn up." The whole thing raised many, many issues. "How'd you lose the damn thing anyway?"

"It was stolen from me," anger was audible in the personification's voice, actual emotion resounding for the first time. "By a man called Burgess."

Burgess...now that was a name to trigger wonders. In the magical community, Burgess' notoriety was profound, a horror whose works were well-known even outside those circles. There were old scandals about the man and his followers, mythicised and elaborated into legends. Personally, John found all that old magical shit childish, all the people dressed up in robes chanting. Bollocks to that.

" _The Daemon King_ , eh? Nice one. You must be older than you look." As he said that, smiling mockingly, he reached for a box of photographs and other papers, high above his head. What he wouldn't give to have Chas on this one, if only to do the heavy lifting. Chas wouldn't have clumsily fumbled and knocked the box to the floor in a flurry of captured memories. "Damn!" Picking them up, John sighed. "Don't know why I hang on to all this shit. If there was a fire it'd be like my whole life was going up in flames…" he stopped, his gaze lingering on the photo in his hand. Realisation struck him. "Oh. Jesus."

A pretty, rake-thin girl, all tarted up to the nines, sunglasses covering gaunt junkie eyes. Her smile was wide, beautiful, head full of alcohol and false hope. On her arm was her irritable (but admittedly great looking, even if he did say so himself) boyfriend, caught unawares by whichever bastard had brought a camera. Amazing Rachel. Junkie Rachel. Rachel who had stolen and sold all his possessions that were worth anything. He'd never realised she'd nicked the pouch as well. _Fuck_.

"I know what happened to the pouch," he said, shifting uncomfortably. "An' if she hasn't turned it into junk, I know exactly where it is too."

‡

The second drive was longer than the first, and in the long expanse of time on the journey, Zed forced John to tell her precisely what the deal was. Reluctantly, he admitted he'd had this particular ex several years back, who had cleared out his apartment while he'd been away in Alaska for six months, converted his TV, CD collection and even the broken microwave oven into heroin and vanished. He'd come back and found her gone, and was understandably pissed off. It seemed as though, underneath the bullshit and the ingrained swagger, John genuinely cared about her. That was the thing, he tried to pretend he didn't, that he hadn't cared when Zed had kissed Jim Corrigan, but she'd seen the hurt in his eyes and felt like she was betraying him. He cared so unbelievably much. About Rachel. About Anne-Marie. About Gary Lester, who had died because of him. About Chas, and try as he might've when they had first met, quite quickly he came to care about _Zed_ too.

"You really know how to pick them, don't you?" she muttered.

"How was I to know?" John pointed out. "She seemed alright when we first got together. It was only later I realised she was...y'know. An' I wasn't exactly all there at the time, so I thought may as well, since she was a looker and all."

Zed shook her head disdainfully "You're a repulsive man, you know that?"

And John, obnoxious, awful John, winked. "You're just sayin' that, luv. I know how you feel about me really."

"In your dreams." Zed hissed, and in the back Morpheus looked up, meeting Zed's eyes in the mirror. "Uh...bad choice of words?"

"You think?" John wanted another cigarette. Zed could tell by now. He wouldn't, not in _her_ car. Chas had long since given up, just making the blond exorcist roll the window down a little. Zed had standards. Obviously her standards weren't too high, because she was friends with John (not colleagues against the Rising Darkness anymore, he wasn't much of a mentor figure to begin with anyway, but _friends_ ) but some things still stood.

"How much further?" Morpheus asked, in a voice Zed tentatively identified as 'impatient'. You couldn't really tell with an echo like that. "Time is of the essence."

"Okay, okay, hold your horses mate. Rachel's dad used to live pretty near here. She's living in his place now. If you're really bored, we can play I-spy, like. I-spy with my little eye, something beginning with…t"

Silence. Then, to Zed's surprise, the Lord of Dreams seemed to think, and said "Tree."

"Wrong."

More thought, narrowing of eyebrows. "Tarmac?"

Constantine grinned proudly. "Nope."

Several minutes went by consisting mostly of guesses, anything from the concept of time to trains being bandied about. Finally, as they were pulling up outside the house, John got out of the car, quickly reaching for a cigarette.

"'The futility of struggling against mankind's gradual descent into bestiality," he said, with a tongue-in-cheek smirk. Zed groaned. He was genuinely such a difficult person to be around sometimes. Long drives were hell, not least because he'd pull shit like that. _To the Lord of Dreams, John! Does that mean nothing to you?_ It was how he dealt with things, an unhealthy coping mechanism of mockery and sarcasm. So very British of him. Morpheus gave him a look. "So we...uh, knock and ask the old man where Rachel's staying, right?"

"The pouch is here." Morpheus said, quietly. Zed wasn't surprised. The house gave off a strange air, pricking at the corners of Zed's mind, teasing at strange visions.

"How do you know?" John asked persistently. As if he wanted to prolong the inevitable. He wasn't stupid, he knew something was off about the house too.

"I _know_." Morpheus replied tonelessly. "The Pouch is here. And more than the Pouch. This house is dangerous, John Constantine," He looked at Zed, and spoke her name with no small degree of suspicion. " _Zed_ Martin." Did he know? He couldn't. He'd been locked up for 75 years, hadn't he? He couldn't know.

"Zed, luv, stay in the car, alright?" John seemed uneasy. "Roll up the windows, lock the doors. Take off at the first sign of trouble."

Zed shook her head. "But what about you?" If he didn't come out of that house, there was no way she was driving off into the sunset, or sitting there and letting him die. She wasn't going to let that happen. He mattered too much. He was important.

What about him?

‡

Was there anything more disastrous than dragging a psychic with a brain tumour into an unsettling potentially nightmare-filled house from a low-budget B-movie. He had been able to sense its power through the bag, who knew what the presence of the sand would do to Zed? Ultimately, he would be okay. He wasn't about to risk Zed.

He'd say the same to Chas, and Chas was a sodding immortal: "I want you an' Chas to hold a nice little ceremony and carry on fighting the Rising Darkness. You and Jimbo can sort shit out together. If I don't come out of here in one piece, it's your job to put one over on those demonic buggers for me. Also, an' this is very important, tell Manny he's a wanker." Zed smiled faintly. "Worst comes to the worst, keep an eye on Chas for me. Anyway, I should be getting along. Don't bail unless there's trouble - I'm not walking back to the millhouse from here - keep all the doors and windows-"

"Locked, I know." Zed looked worried. "Be careful, John. Both of you be careful." The Lord of Dreams nodded.

Approaching the house, John started eyeing up options for an entrance - breaking in around the back seemed like a sensible idea, but with a wave of the hand, the Sandman opened the door wide, and they tentatively stepped inside.

"Mind out for the human," Dream said, in that bloody weird way he had.

"What do you-"

That was when he nearly stood on a corpse. A living corpse. In rooms made of Rachel's father's flesh, pulsing and living and stretched taut and rendered something else, something tortured and agonised. Something subsisting solely on dreams.

He nearly tripped down into a nightmarish abyss, the house would have claimed him without that creepy bastard pulling him out of it. What it would have done to Zed...he pictured her, seizing up again, spasming on the floor beyond his help. His responsibility. His _fault._ Taken and wrapped up by the tangible psychic energy. Tactile impressions, that was what she picked up. This whole house was stained. It would have been impossible for her not to touch any of it, not the bloody walls or the gunk hanging off in thick strings from the ceiling in globular chandeliers, and then the dreams would have her.

Dreams. The ultimate junk.

Rachel. The ultimate addict.

John Constantine. The ultimate arsehole who could have stopped all of this, the man in the hallway, the vivisection and wallpapering of Rachel's father - what was his name? He'd never even known. A nice man. Undeserving. And if, if he'd looked after the bag better, _if_ he hadn't fucked even that up, this wouldn't have happened.

The dreams shrank back in fear of their Lord, who commanded them away and they heeded his word. Onwards through the nightmare-house. John had seen a lot of houses worthy of that name, but this was the only one where it was literally true. Onwards. Toward _her_.

Rachel. Writhing in dreams, kept alive solely in dreams. Skin necrotic and rotting, decaying. Dead. _Another one bites the dust..._ he thought, lamely. Alive, talking to him, but dead. Oh, Rachel. Brilliant Rachel. _Junkie_ Rachel, going out on her final high. He couldn't watch. He couldn't. The Sandman took the dreams away, and Rachel's eyes closed for the final time, _to_ , John thought cynically, ' _a better place'_. Leaving the room, he could have sworn he heard the sound of wings. Probably pigeons in the rafters. Had they been brought in by the dreams too? Were there dead pigeons falling from their perches, the dreams that had sustained them taken away?

All in all, the whole thing was over surprisingly quickly, but it felt as though it had taken hours. Like that movie, that one with Leonardo DiCaprio post-prettyboy stage (but admittedly, aging well). Whatever it was called, John had ironically slept through most of it and remembered very little except something about a suicide pact and dreams within dreams. And that time in a dream passed faster than time in real life. They had, essentially, been into a dream just then. Was there any real time difference? At all?

It was over now anyway. In retrospect, John really should have taken the advice from the Dream Lord and waited in the car. He had been superfluous, he had got in the way, and he'd seen Rachel again.

"She died peacefully. She died happy." Dream spoke, snapping John out of his reverie, and placing a hand on his shoulder in a surprisingly comforting gesture.

"Yeah. Great," John said absently, without even a trace of sarcasm. "Thanks…"

"The nightmares should not have been able to do in my absence, they should have been bound to my Realm...I could understand something like the Corinthian getting through, but these were echoes, carried here by the sand. Something affected them." He narrowed his eyebrows, focusing the intense light into piercing stars. "This _Rising Darkness._ I must regather my objects again."

"Yeah, well. You've got your sodding sandbag back, then. Where are you off to now on your merry treasure hunt?"

"To Hell…" Did he sound frightened, perhaps? Maybe. It was hard to tell with someone like that. If he was, John genuinely pitied him. As someone who'd seen Hell, he didn't fancy going back there anytime soon. It was the place to which he was damned. The inevitable.

"Aren't we all, mate? Aren't we all?" Awkward silence. "See you."

"Goodbye, John Constantine." The being literally started to fade, like these types did. As he did, a thought occurred to John. Okay, maybe he'd got in the way a little, and the whole thing with Rachel was slightly, okay, _massively_ his fault, but he was in a position to ask and- he needed to ask. At least this.

"Wait!" The Sandman solidified again. "I know this is a bit much to ask, and honestly I hate being the one to owe people things, and if you do this I will definitely owe you, but please. Newcastle. 's been two years now. Can you take the dreams of it away?"

Morpheus stared at him, at first taken aback, then almost sympathetically which was bloody weird, and then nodded. He seemed, if only for a moment, a little less distant. Then, of course, he vanished into thin air and was gone which was about as distant as you could get. The Sandman had buggered off from whence he came. On his way, apparently, to Hell.

 _Rather you than me, mate_ , John thought as he headed back to the car, _rather you than me._

Zed was relieved to see him, and he lay down in the back of the car, he fell into absent, half-remembered dreams that he wouldn't remember when he woke up. Wouldn't remember because they weren't of Newcastle. The Dream Lord had kept his word. Meaning John owed him.

As he drifted off, he hummed the same tune that had been annoying him all fucking day ' _Mr Sandman, bring me a dream…'_ while Zed groaned and told him to shut the hell up, then starting swearing at him in Spanish, which made him laugh just a little before he fell asleep.

Zed watched him in the mirror and sighed. "Idiot," she muttered, and continued driving.

‡

' _The Rising Darkness', Constantine had said. Concerning. This made his trip to Hell all the more perilous. But all the more necessary at the same time._

 _There were words that needed to be had._

 _First, the Helmet._

 _Then, the Ruby._

 _Then he would put matters to right in his realm and it would, in due course, rectify itself. The Rising Darkness had no place in his realm._

 _There were, after all, Rules._


End file.
